"What was billed as an extraordinary event launched this morning [Thursday] in the most mundane of surroundings: a neutral-toned conference room that featured scientific researchers seated around a makeshift table.
'We are here to talk about air quality,' Chris Frey, chairman of the Independent Particulate Matter Review Panel, said at the outset of a two-day meeting that is effectively a rebuke to EPA's handling of a high-stakes review of the standards for a common, but dangerous, pollutant.
Its 20 members, almost all of them from academia, had previously served on a comparable advisory panel for EPA, only to be summarily fired last fall by the agency's then-acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler. They have now regrouped to take on the same role, albeit unofficially, with the help of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research and advocacy group critical of the Trump administration's approach to science (Greenwire, Sept. 26).
'Today is unprecedented,' Gretchen Goldman, research head for the group's Center for Science and Democracy, said in an opening statement. 'Nothing like this has been done before. Nothing like this has ever been necessary.'"
